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Chapter 1: Microsoft Offi ce SharePoint Services 2007 (MOSS)
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One of the most important things to insist on as a user of SharePoint is training, either formal training
courses or online training. Free online training is available from Microsoft and a downloadable
SharePoint training site can be installed either locally on your PC or as a full SharePoint web site to
which all staff can be given access. In my own case, I used a combination of all of the above: materials
made available globally across the sites, formal short training sessions, and the installation of the
Microsoft training site. However, there is no substitute for actually rolling up your sleeves and using the
software the best way to learn is to actually do it.
Desktop to Internet
When set up with the appropriate security permissions, it is also possible to access your intranet sites
when users are not in the office, directly via the browser. In my own organization all sites use HTTPS, a
standard Internet security protocol. That way, anyone with permission can log in from anywhere. This is
a great improvement over previous systems, where it was possible that staff had to sign in to multiple
systems before reaching the documents required, or use third - party software to move documents into
the corporate environment from home. Once logged in to the site, all that is required is to save a file in
Word. Indeed, access to information has been one of the major selling points of the software. SharePoint
really allows you to extend the desktop out to the Internet!
Given the huge array of features and capabilities in MOSS 2007, there is still more under the covers. In
addition to the major collaboration features, MOSS is also a web publishing environment. MOSS
contains a fully featured web publishing system called a content management system, which can be used
to publish standard web pages and web sites within and outside your organization. Pages can be created
and held until authorized for publishing.
Summary
In this chapter, you have read a broad overview of the features available to you when using WSS Version
3 or MOSS 2007. In the rest of this book, you will look again at many of the features and get some hands -
on practice in actually using them. You will cover almost every out - of - the - box tool available to you using
MOSS and Office 2007. The book s later chapters will look in more detail at MOSS and its interaction
with each of the Microsoft Office 2007 applications, showing you how to take full advantage of one of
the most powerful software packages to hit the business world in a long time. In Chapter 2 , you will look
at the different types of sites available to you with SharePoint, how to create them, and how to change
their look and feel, using only the browser.
All of the features discussed so far are available out of the box, which should go some way to letting you
begin to see the breadth and power of this software. In many cases, in order to meet specific business
requirements, additional features are created in - house by developers to further extend the capabilities of
the software.
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